Blog

My first introduction to Oak Hills Church in Folsom, California was in the early 2000s at a gathering called the Spiritual Formation Forum in Los Angeles. Several hundred, primarily church leaders like myself, were hungering for and exploring deeper ways of forming adults spiritually in Jesus’ name.  I sat in on a session with Mike [...]

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“A quiet move of the Holy Spirit across the globe.” Unexplainable. Remarkable. Almost without effort on our part, we are making connections with like-minded ministry leaders who are looking for a process to deepen their own leadership of companionship and lead other to do the same. Enter Michael Pratt, an Indiana-born pastor serving in Ukraine [...]

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Sarah was looking for the resource that had changed her sister’s life. I have great conversations with a lot of people when they call into our offices. But this was an exemplary story: A woman from the west coast––we’ll call her Sarah––was on the line. She said, “My sister, Rose, has been a Christian all [...]

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What we do at VantagePoint3 is hard to explain. Curt Patterson helps us... "I was looking for a way to impact leaders and leave a legacy in the second half of my life," says Curt. Curt was introduced to VantagePoint3 at his local church, Orchard Hill Church, in Cedar Falls, Iowa in 2003. Curt and [...]

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It was 22 years ago this month that Randy Reese and I attended the International Consultation on Discipleship, a conference in Eastbourne, England. An important week in my life personally and in the life of VantagePoint3 (VP3). As I remember it, there were 400+ Christian leaders from 50+ countries, gathered to address the state of the [...]

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A couple of weeks back we hosted a What Matters Most conversation on the topic of Life Transitions. This was the fifth in a series we have been hosting since last summer, centered around the craft of helping adults grow up into Christ in every way. We are so thankful for our special guests Scott [...]

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  God is certainly up to something good in this world, in our communities, and in our lives, but any Christian who seeks to align his or her life with this reality must not be naïve to the difficulty of the journey. Storms and setbacks will come. Jobs are lost, friends suffer, children rebel, depression, [...]

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On the Iowa prairie where I live, the most humbling hobby I tend is as a beekeeper. This is my 6th year of beekeeping so you would think I would have a few things ironed out. But, instead, I am among the ranks of beekeepers with multiple years of loss, disappointment, hard work that nets […]

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When the last of our three children left for college it was a big deal for me. I had this emotional tension vacillating between sadness and satisfaction.  And truth be told, I was ready for a “break.” I had earned it, right? Within the same month that I watched our son’s earthly possessions pack up […]

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Last week I spent an early morning over zoom with a group of men from Cedar Falls, Iowa who meet together every Thursday. It is a wonderful group who over the last 16 months have become good friends, fellow travelers on the journey. They went through VP3’s The Journey last year and are now working […]

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I have been reflecting a good bit recently on one of my favorite stories, Little Walker’s night at the boardwalk.      Little Walker’s favorite place on earth is the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey. If you have ever been to this boardwalk in the summer you know the extent of the crowds of […]

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When I heard that best-selling author and Christian counselor Larry Crabb had passed away last week, I got to some remembering.  I recall seeing in the summer of 1989, a video series based on Crabb’s book Inside Out, in which he argued, if we are going to take seriously Jesus Christ, then we need to move […]

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